Reactions are easy-peasy. Somebody does or says something daft or provocative … or maybe we are having a bad day — and bingo bongo! — our response is not exactly excellent. Sadly that dratted ball starts rolling down the hill and the other person says or does something that gets under our skin. And then the bad stuff … the stuff we sorta kinda hoped wasn’t in there, inside us, starts bubbling out … e-v-e-r-y-where. Sigh. After that, maybe we are a tiny bit ashamed, because we feel that we ought to do better. But then that thought quickly flies out of the window. and we slam the window shut behind it … so it can’t get back in and stop us, as we settle in to dissect someone else’s life and attitudes!

OR … we half-apologise for bagging some poor schmuck who has no idea what they just did! But then, a little while later, because we are not done with feeling offended yet … and now they are looking at us funny ..  we pick it up where we left it and keep right on going …!! This sometimes means that we have made a decision that we need sympathy or understanding, more than spiritual growth. Suddenly we are dragging out every single thing this person ever said or did that hurt us, to add to the glorious bonfire of ‘poor me,’ we just built. Afterward, we can’t for the life of us figure out where that roaring blaze came from! … while we are sitting in the smouldering ruins of REGRET.

OR … maybe we FEEL JUSTIFIED be-cau-se of the way we’ve been treated. After all, ‘they said this and they did that! And what are we supposed to do after they were so mean to us? After all we are only human!’ ….even bigger sigh. Justifying ourselves is the first step down the slipperiest slide in the world. The thing is, to continue the ride down that slide we will probably have to give examples of their badness – usually to someone else who has ears the size of Dumbo the elephant. Someone who knows how to make sympathetic noises, because they too have their own bad people who don’t understand them either!

If we are particularly miffed at someone we may even talk to several different people about the offender, collecting ‘votes’ for or against the other person’s behaviour! That’s a really dumb idea that leads to self-justification. Of course I know that nobody reading this has never bin there and dun any of that!! Me neither! However, if I were Pinocchio, my nose would be out of the house and down the street by now.  My point is this, we opt for sympathy and ‘oh you poor dear,‘  rather than clinging to Christ and what He did for us, and doing what He would do. Psalm 31:1-4.

Jesus said NOTHING. He did NOTHING. He gave his back to those tormentors… Isaiah 53:7,8a. ”He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away….” …If we want to follow Jesus Christ, our precious Master and beloved Friend, then we will need to take the road He chose. His road had a huge cost and it ended up on a cross.

Mean, critical, spiteful people are our personal cross to bear. And most of us have a few of them, hanging about. Time for the dance of joy! 🥳 🎉 Remaining silent in the face of criticism and someone else’s miserable … or even accurate … opinions of us and our behaviour, seems impossible. But Christ did it. That means He knows how to do it and the Holy Spirit can get us through it. We can learn to respond instead of reacting. He died to give us the same power He used.

How? Well, I recommend saying nothing, and praying “help help” over and over again, until we begin to feel His peace … ‘which passes all our understanding!’  Then we wait until we feel it starting to settle down over our hearts, and then we cling to it like a limpet. Philippians 4:7. His peace makes no sense to my mind but it is the most blessed thing E-V-E-R. Anger disappears. It goes away even more when I apologise for getting angry with the other person … even if they started in on me first. It actually grows as I fix my mind on Him. However, I can be tempted back into my reactionary attitude if the other person hasn’t got the same script I am reading from, and they start being unpleasant again! I need to pray that His peace will be more valuable to me than making my point or feelings known. 

I must conclude by saying that I am still learning this process, and I fail a lot… I’ve always been a last-word-Lana kind of gal. (Apologies to anyone out there who is called Lana – I don’t mean you … I just liked the alliteration! 🤪) Which means once I am wound up, unwinding me becomes difficult. But nothing is too hard for the Holy Spirit – including me. I have realised that my faith in His ability needs to be greater, than my own faith in my bad attitudes!

Responding to the Holy Spirit is way better than reacting to someone else, because it can change the outcome … and on some occasions, it even changes the outcome on both sides. Bye. 👋